Back to the Fifties (season 6, episode 1)
by Strangely Familiar
Summary: S6E1: Hyde has brought the Land of Untold Stories to Storybrooke, but Dr. Jekyll helps Regina and Emma use their magic on Hyde. It all backfires when the townspeople are sucked into a mysterious portal that takes them to the time of sock-hops and jukeboxes. Stuck in the 1950s, how will they return to present day, where's Hyde, and who's keeping secrets that could change it all?
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

"I come bearing rum," called Hook. His voice found Emma in the kitchen, where she was attempting to keep gravy from catching on fire. She walked to the entryway and smiled when she saw him smirking in the doorway, bottle of Captain Morgan in hand. Man, he looked good.

He quirked a dark eyebrow at the floral apron tied loosely around her signature red lather jacket.

"Well, don't you look a perfect wife," he said. Emma ignored the flip in her stomach at the word 'wife' and gave him a mock scowl. "Granny gave it to me. Apparently it will help me with my cooking skills. If by cooking skills she meant burning things."

Hook grinned, then shut the door and walked to Emma. He reached around her and pulled her closer with his hook. She would never tell exactly how much she loved it when he did that. Better to let him work for it. He was a pirate, after all. They kissed and Emma smiled up at him.

"So, where's this rum you promised?" Hook held up a bottle of Captain Morgan.

"Ah, my favorite kind," she teased.

"Favorite? He looks more like a bloody parrot than a pirate."

Emma laughed. "What's so bad about parrots? Very smart birds. And all that pretty red," she said, goading him.

"And here I thought you liked black leather." He pulled her closer with his hook. She ran her hands over his jacket.

"I do. And if I have to pick, I'd say my favorite captain is Captain Hook."

He leaned in for another kiss but Emma gasped and pulled away. "The gravy!" She disappeared into the kitchen just as Hook smelled smoke. He chuckled and followed her, finding Emma fanning a hopelessly burnt pan of goo. She looked at him apologetically.

"No matter," he said, waving his hook. He set down the bottle of rum and grabbed two glasses from her cabinet. With a flourish he poured them both a glass of the amber liquid and handed one to Emma.

"A toast," he said in the direction of the smoking pan of gravy. "To the delicious grey stuff that ne'er was." Emma saw the glint of laughter in his eyes and held up her glass.

"And to parrots."

"And pirates," he finished. They clinked glasses and raised them to their lips.

A loud rumbling sound filled the house. The kitchen floor began to shake and they looked at each other, confused. The shaking grew more violent and rum sloshed onto the floor as Hook and Emma reached out to steady themselves.

"What the hell?" They said it in unison and made eye contact just as they were jolted onto the floor. The sound of objects falling throughout the house added to the noise.

"Emma!" Hook shouted as Emma scrambled to her feet and grappled her way out of the kitchen. "What do you think you're doing?" He followed her to the front door, managing not to drop his glass of rum.

"I have to find Henry," she said over the din. She ran out of the house and Hook cursed as he ran after her.

"He's with Regina!" Hook called, and stopped short behind Emma. She stood in the road, staring up. Hook followed her gaze. A huge shadow came over them as an oblong vessel, as big as a ship, flew over them. It looked as if was heading towards a distance clearing in the forest.

"What the –" Hook said, but Emma was already running in the direction of the monstrous thing. He saw people spilling out from their houses and following Emma.

"We can't have _one_ normal date night," he muttered. Tossing the glass of rum onto the sidewalk, he ran after her.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Emma stood next to Henry and Regina in the grassy clearing, staring at the huge thing that had ruined her date night with Hook.

"I wasted rum for this," panted Hook, coming up next to her and putting his hands on his knees.  
"Looks like we've got some visitors in Storybrooke," Emma murmured, eyeing the spot where the thing landed.

"The question is; are they friendly visitors?" said David, walking up with Mary Margaret. They all stared at the oblong ship, but there was no sign of movement. The clearing was filling as people came to gawk at the thing that had literally shaken up Storybrooke.

"What is that thing anyway?" asked Henry.

"If I'm looking at what I think I'm looking at, then that thing is a dirigible," said Dr. Jekyll. He pushed his glasses up his nose disconcertedly.

"A diri-what?" Mary Margaret asked.

"A dirigible. It's from the Land of Untold Stories."

Emma and Regina exchanged glances. What kind of people came from a place where stories were kept hidden?

"Well then, let's give them a proper welcome," said Regina, starting towards the ship.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Hyde's voice rang through the clearing and everyone turned. He smiled darkly and ambled towards them. Emma and Regina both instinctively stepped slightly in front of Henry.

"What do you know, Hyde?" David said sternly.

"Oh, it isn't about what I know. It's about what you don't know that makes this so ironic." He chuckled at the looks of confusion on their faces and continued. "As my dear Dr. Jeckyll has pointed out, that is the dirigible from the Land of Untold Stories. Care to guess why they're here?"

"I'd care to knock that smile off your face if you don't get to the point, Hyde," spat Regina. Hyde steepled his hands together under a leering smile that only made his face look more gruesome.

"They're here because I brought them here. Because your friend Rumpelstiltskin gave me the keys to your lovely little town, I now control Storybrooke." His voice echoed ominously, and Emma felt her stomach drop. Hyde owned Storybrooke? Behind her, she felt movement and heard Dr. Jekyll's voice whisper in her ear. "Keep him talking. When I give a signal, hit him with your powers." Emma felt the thrill of adrenaline down her spine and saw Dr. Jekyll whispering to Regina and spreading the message.

"I don't believe you. How do we know you're not just lying to us?" Regina said. She looked at Emma and a look of recognition passed between them; they both knew the plan.

Hyde, never able to resist having the last word, sighed dramatically.

"Oh, Regina, isn't it obvious? Because you know how Rumpelstiltskin loves his dear, sleeping Belle. And how he loves his deals even more. The keys to the town were a small price to pay for the knowledge of how to wake his wife."

"You will never own Storybrooke," Mary Margaret said loudly. David put his arm

around her and they glared defiantly at Hyde. "Despite what Rumpelstiltskin may have done, you'll have to defeat all of us before you ever control our town."

"Oh don't worry, I will," purred Hyde. "Which reminds me, I really must greet my guests. Terribly rude to leave them unattended before we create some much-needed chaos." He laughed mockingly and turned to walk into the trees.

Emma looked desperately for Dr. Jekyll and saw him running from the dirigible, holding what looked like the lid of a trashcan. He ran up halfway between the crowd and Hyde.

"Now!" he yelled to Regina and Emma. Hyde turned at the sound and before he could react, Emma blasted him with her magic. To her surprise, Regina didn't focus her powers onto Hyde, but instead sent a streak of magic at the metal shield thing that Jekyll was holding. The magic refracted and hit Hyde.

"No!" Hyde shouted.

"What is this?" Emma yelled to Jekyll.

"It's working!" yelled Dr. Jekyll. "The material in the orderly's baton that defeated Hyde in our realm made the dirigible, and with your magic infusing it, he's becoming powerless."

Hyde let out a cry as he sunk to his knees. Suddenly, a flash of light came from the trees behind Hyde. A beam of Regina's magic reflecting off of the dirigible object suddenly split away and hit something in the forest. A dizzying spray of small red beams of magic exploded from the trees, and before they could duck, hit everyone in the field.

Emma felt a strange pulling sensation, as if an invisible hand was grabbing her from behind and pulling her backwards. A rushing sound filled her ears and the scene around her began to change. A huge yellow portal had opened and began to suck everyone into it. She panicked at the sight of Henry being pulled away and grabbed for his hand.

"Mom, what's happening?" Henry yelled, clinging to her.

"I don't know!" Emma tried to resist the pull but it was pointless.

"Emma," rasped Hook. He wrapped his arms around her and Henry as they spun wildly. She saw faces flashing by as everyone was covered by the yellow portal and suddenly the spinning got faster. Her ears were filled with different, scratchy sounds, like somebody was tuning an old radio at super speed. The portal spun them violently and she thought she might be sick.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Suddenly, everything went black and still. Emma felt the cold ground beneath her and she took a shaky breath, trying to fight the nausea.

"Henry?" she called into the blackness. She noticed that it wasn't completely dark; there were stars above them.

"Mom!" Henry called from the ground nearby, and Emma reached over to find Henry and Hook sprawled next to each other. She sighed in relief and looked around. They seemed to be in the same clearing, but it had somehow turned to night. All around them, townspeople were groaning and picking themselves off of the ground.

"Henry!" Regina rushed over to them and hugged her son. "Are you hurt?" she asked.

"No, I'm fine. Where are we? What just happened?"

"Emma? Regina? Is that — oof! Sorry, sorry, I didn't see you there," came Mary Margaret's voice. She and David wove through the people on the ground and a small wave of relief passed over all of them. At least their family was safe.

"I can't see a thing, what just happened?" Mary Magaret said worriedly.

"Thankfully, some of us are prepared," David said, pulling a small flashlight from his pocket. He clicked it on and a dinky pool of light hit their feet.

"And thankfully, some of us have magic," Regina said, conjuring a bright flaming torch from a cloud of purple smoke. They could see clearly now and they all reacted at once. None of them were in their regular clothes. Emma saw Regina was in a pink vintage dress with pumps and a pearl necklave. Her hair was in retro waves and her lips were pin-up red.

"Regina, you're…" Emma began, but Regina was looking at her with the same confused expression.

"Emma, look at yourself," she said. Emma looked down. Her pants, boots, and leather jacket were gone. In their place, a tweed pencil skirt and blouse that revealed an unnaturally tiny waist. No wonder her stomach hurt; she had some kind of girdle on underneath this get-up. She felt her hair and realized it had been pulled back into a bouncy ponytail. She realized that a pair of cat-eye glasses sat on her nose. On her feet were a pair of black leather pumps.

"Oh, I am so not into those," she muttered.

The guys were in suits and fedora hats. They all looked as if they all had stepped out of a vintage car commercial.

All around them, people looked at each other in confusion. The whole town looked like they were dressed for a fifties party.

"Where are my leather pants?" Hook demanded.

"Well this is an unexpected side effect," Mary Margaret mused.

"Ok everyone," Regina called out, "we may all look strange, and there is nobody who wants to get out of these ridiculous clothes more than me," she said, giving a dirty look toward the pink dress. It was the most girly she'd probably ever dressed. "But please take out any flashlights, phones or other source of light you have on you. If we want to find our way back to town, we don't need people tripping over each other." Slowly small lights began to come on across the field as people turned on phones and flashlights.

"I think that portal must have transported us ahead a few hours," Emma commented. "I mean, we're still in the clearing. It's just dark."

"But why would we have also gotten these clothes? And what caused the portal to open in the first place?" asked Mary Margaret.

"Or may who caused the portal to open," said Hook darkly. "My money is on Jekyll's evil twin."

"He isn't my twin," Dr. Jekyll said indignantly, joining their circle. "He's the evil within me which I clearly no longer possess."

"Obviously, and now he's causing even more trouble than when he was inside of you," Hook retorted.

"We don't know if Hyde opened the portal, or he's even here anymore, so let's leave Dr. Jekyll out of it," David said. "What we need to do is find our way back to town and make a plan. And figure out where our clothes are."

There were murmurs of agreement and they led the group through the darkness back into downtown Storybrooke.

Emma walked next to her parents as they trudged on the familiar route.

"Do you think Hyde could have done this?" she asked her dad quietly.

"I don't know. It didn't look like his style, but maybe he himself didn't do it," David murmured. Mary Margaret frowned. "What do you mean?"

"He brought the dirigible to Storybrooke — who knows who was in it that might be convinced to help Hyde create chaos? We might have enemies from the Land of Untold Stories that we don't even know about."

When he said it, Emma suddenly stopped. A vision overtook her and her body started shaking. The sound of clashing metal swords and the sight of herself battling a hooded figure filled her mind. The images flashed before her eyes and the feeling of terror swept over her. The vision stopped as suddenly as it had started and she saw her parents looking at her with concern.

"Emma, are you ok?" her mother asked, placing a gloved hand on her shoulder.

Emma swallowed and tried to hide her shaking hands. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just left over nausea." She tried to give a reassuring smile and started forward again. Her parents walked next to her and she pretended not to see the questioning look they exchanged, instead staring at the ground.

They were finally at the edge of town. Emma was ready to go to Granny's and have some hot food while they figured out what the hell had happened to them. The words "time" and "travel" had been playing through her mind on repeat, and that thought paired with the stomach-churning portal and the shake-inducing vision made her want to lie down.

"What in the world?" Mary Margaret breathed. Emma looked up from the pumps which were currently killing her feet. Her jaw dropped. Storybrooke looked like it had travelled back to the 50s.

The cars that lined the street were all straight from 1950. She walked up to Granny's diner and opened the door. She had thought the diner was retro before. Now she saw that everything was in shades of turquoise, pink and white, and a huge jukebox played in the corner. Granny hurried in behind Emma and gasped. "My kitchen!" she exclaimed.

Emma's family came in behind her. Henry looked around the diner and spotted himself in a mirror. "Cool," he said as he snapped the red suspenders on his crisp white shirt.

"What isn't so cool is the fact that Hyde is gone," Hook announced, walking through the crowd milling outside the diner. "And we seem to have entered a realm which has no respect for a bloke's sense of comfort," he said, fidgeting with the black tie around his neck and the starchy suit jacket. "Even my hair is trapped," he added, grimacing at how his black hair had been neatly combed and gelled.

"The fifties weren't known for their leather pants," Regina said dryly.

"But why the fifties?" Mary Margaret asked. They sat in a large booth and discussed the yellow portal, the disappearance of Hyde, and the fact they seemed to be stuck in the fifties. Granny interrupted them, bringing out plates of burgers, fries, and milkshakes.

"These were the only ingredients left," she said.

"I'm not complaining," Henry said, popping a fry into his mouth. "I've always wanted to travel back to the fifties." Regina and Emma smiled briefly at Henry's cheerfulness.

"Maybe Dr. Jekyll knows something. Wasn't he the one who came up with the idea about using part of the dirigible to defeat Hyde?" Mary Margaret asked.

"But it didn't defeat Hyde," Emma noted. "For all we know, he's back in our time, plotting with his friends from the Land of Untold Stories."

"Do you think Jekyll knew that the spell would make us time travel?" Mary Margaret wondered. "Or did his plan backfire?"

"Or maybe this is exactly what he wanted," Hook growled. "I think the good doctor knows more than he lets on. I never did trust him."

The door to the diner crashed open and Dr. Jekyll, covered in blood, staggered forward and fell to the floor. They all jumped up in their seats and rushed forward.

David got to Jekyll first and knelt next to him. "Dr. Jekyll, what happened?"

"I found Hyde," the doctor gasped. "He tried to take the dirigible scrap from me but I got it back." They all noticed the round piece of metal in Jekyll's scraped hand. "He attacked me but I managed to run away."

"Where's Hyde now?" Regina asked. "Why didn't he follow you here?"

"Because," he said faintly, "he knows what I can do to him."

Dr. Jekyll's head flopped to the side as he passed out. They all looked at each other, the same look of worry and confusion mirrored on their faces.

Hyde was somewhere out there, waiting and ready to attack.

They were trapped in another time without any idea how they'd gotten there or how to get back. And there was something Jekyll could do to Hyde that had stopped the evil madman from killing the innocent doctor.

Things had just gotten very strange.


End file.
